Gaming News

There's a post on our Forums with a bunch of hints and suggestions for getting BF2 working as well as can be expected. Have a read and feel free to post any comments or questions.

Hopefully there'll be a game on this Friday - more to follow on that later.

The much-awaited Battlefield 2 launched today, and first impressions are awesome. No doubt the odd Friday night session will be dedicated to it over the coming weeks :)

Ubisoft have released a movie of in-game action from the third game in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series. The movie is fantastic and well worth a look. It is just over 15MB and can be downloaded from Ubisoft.

Ghost Recon 3 is due to be released this November, and will initially be available on the new XBox 360 console.

An old favourite CS map is set to make a return to CS: Source in the near future. CS_Assault is the one where the CTs have to rescue the hostages from inside the shipping warehouse. It's a relatively small map, but very tactical given the limited number of entrances to the warehouse.

You can view a couple of screenshots on the PC Zone site.

There have been two major updates to CS: Source over the last couple of weeks. The highlights of the updates are as follows:

• New maps de_inferno and de_port
• Players must now target another player for at least a half second before the player ID text hint shows up
• Map-specific configs, eg to allow different numbers of bots per map
• Grates/chain link fences no longer affect bullets
• Bots no longer attack enemies that are very far away unless they have a sniper rifle, or the enemies are shooting at them. Instead, they track the enemy and move to a better attack position

The full list of changes can be found in these two articles on the Valve news site:

Counter-Strike: Source and Source Engine Updates 13/05/2005
Counter-Strike: Source and Source Engine Updates 19/05/2005

There's another CS night tomorrow. Meet in MSN or Skype as usual at around 8pm. The server will likely be one from the Game Servers page which have proved reliable in the past.

Valve have released an update to CS: Source to fix the incorrect names that can appear in the scoreboard. We did spot this bug on Friday, resulting in much confusion for poor Bobbly :)

Yesterday saw another good CS night. We tried another couple of servers, because our usual servers hadn't been updated with the latest Steam patches. They have been added to our Server List page.

The FastFrag server was a bit laggy, but the Jolt server was pretty solid. The 4-way Skype conference will not have helped matters.

Trebz was the resident paparazzi this time. You can see a selection of his photos on our Photo Gallery. Some good ones, although the traditional one of Wij lobbing the V's appears to be missing.

Following on from Dabs' recent announcement that they are pulling out of TradeDoubler, Screwfix have today announced the same move. As of 30th April 2005, sales generated from this site will no longer earn commission.

If anyone was planning to buy anything from Screwfix, then please do so before 30th April.

The Screwfix scheme has been valuable for us as most of the network infrastructure for Bob's cellar was bought through it.

The proposed games list for next week's LAN is available on our forums.

Update - the list was lost during the hack.

We're holding another CS: Source evening on Friday. Server as yet undecided - the Game Server page will be updated on the night to show the one we're using.

Those of you who didn't play last week will have quite a big Steam and CS update to catch up on, so prolly best to get updated before the game.

Valve released a Steam and CS: Source update yesterday. The majority of the changes are for Counter-Strike, including a new map called cs_compound, and the return of the old classic de_train. There also seem to have been a lot of updates to the bot code.

View the full change list at steampowered.com.

DF-Lynx has announced that the first LAN in his new basement gaming arena will take place this Easter. Festivities will commence on Thursday 24th March and run through til the Sunday.

Further news on game selection to follow, although it's looking doubtful that Battlefield 2 will be out in time.

There will be another CS: Source game this Friday. Meet in MSN or Skype at around 8pm.

Dabs announced today that they will be pulling out of the TradeDoubler affiliate scheme as of Weds 9th February. Here is a quote from the email they sent to all affiliates...

" It is with regret that we need to inform you that as of the 9th Feb until further notice the dabs.com program has been suspended. We hope to resume this program in the future and would like to take this opportunity to thank you all very much for the hard work, time and support that you have put into this. "

This is a blow to DFC as we've bought quite a lot from them through the scheme, and acquired a good number of pizzas from the proceeds.

Valve have released an update to the Source engine to fix a couple of exploits. Hopefully this will allow Trebz to get a few more kills this week as he was clearly being cheated last week :p

Read more at the Steam site.

A few DFs will be playing CS: Source this coming Friday. We've no specific server in mind, so we'll jump on the first one that has the required number of slots and has a decent enough ping. If we find one we like, I'll add it to our Game Servers page for future reference.

Meet on MSN around 7-8pm.

Note that there have been quite a few Steam and CS updates recently, so it might be worth making sure you're updated prior to the game.

Update: the CS night was a great success. Trebz, AngryDaz, Wij (playing under the name of Japseye of Horus), Grendel and Mesmer were present for DFC, plus Absalon and 3epher who are m8s of Trebz. We found a couple of good servers, which have now been added to the servers page for next time.

A new massively multiplayer RPG based on the Star Trek series was announced last year. It is said to be based after the last Next Generation film - Star Trek Nemesis.

For further information on the game, visit the Official FAQ which was published recently.

Following on from yesterday's article, here's a site that might prove useful for those CS tweaks and optimisations - CS.NET Forums.

The General CS Source Forum contains sticky threads to some decent cvar lists for improving fps, graphical quality and network performance. There's also a great FAQ covering many issues.